100 Power Words to Build Your Resume

Writing a resume can seem like trying to learn a foreign language. What should you include in your resume, and how should you put it together? Your chronological resume will follow this basic fast resume outline:

Header

Position Target / Job Title

Keyword block

Work History

Education

Jump in with a Fast Resume Start!

To begin building your actual resume, open up a word processing file, and enter in the information you’ve already decided upon, including your resume header information, your position target or title, and keywords that relate to your target position.

Expand Your Work Experience Section in Your Resume

As you’ve most likely seen in other chronological resumes, this format typically includes a description of the responsibilities held in each position. Sometimes chronological resumes also include information about the employer, and in some cases, details of your accomplishments on the job. The following process will show you how to add these valuable details to your resume work history listings:

Begin with your most recent position, and jot down a few notes about what the company did, as well as your responsibilities, tasks, and any accomplishments. To develop a sentence or two about the description of the company for your resume, fill in some basic information based on what you know about them. Or, if you want to get more formal, pull up their web page or enter the company name on a search engine to find a few sentences describing the organization.

Here’s a sample sentence to get you going:

“This organization developed / sold / provided support for X, Y, and Z.”

If you want, you can add in some additional details, such as annual revenues, a specific department you worked in, and so on. But basically, one or two sentences about the company will be sufficient. As you add details to your own work history section, these resources may be helpful to you:

Your job description. Do you (or the company’s HR department) have a document detailing your position? That description may provide you some verbiage that may help put together some fast resume statements.

Job descriptions off of a job search web site. Job descriptions found on the Internet can be an excellent resource to help you create position description statements for your resume. Find a few that describe the work you performed, and then modify them to make them accurate for you. Along this same line, check out www.acinet.org for comprehensive descriptions of many occupations.

The following “Sentence Starter” table is a listing of several action verbs helpful for beginning and writing your resume job description statements:

Achieved

Administered

Arranged

Analyzed

Assessed

Attained

Advised

Assembled

Appraised

Authored

Budgeted

Built

Calculated

Consulted

Contributed

Coached

Coordinated

Counseled

Collected

Conceived

Contracted

Decided

Defined

Detailed

Developed

Distributed

Diagnosed

Drafted

Delivered

Evaluated

Examined

Encouraged

Eliminated

Excelled

Expanded

Estimated

Formulated

Formed

Facilitated

Founded

Generated

Guided

Gathered

Gained

Handled

Helped

Implemented

Improved

Investigated

Introduced

Investigated

Installed

Launched

Liaison

Maintained

Mastered

Motivated

Managed

Mentored

Monitored

Negotiated

Participated

Performed

Problem solved

Persuaded

Promoted

Purchased

Planned

Programmed

Recruited

Revitalized

Referred

Reviewed

Researched

Repaired

Remodeled

Reported

Recommended

Recruited

Searched

Scheduled

Sold

Simplified

Structured

Surveyed

Screened

Supervised

Summarized

Translated

Transformed

Tailored

Trained

Tested

Upgraded

Validated

Verified

Visualized

Verbalized

Volunteered

Wrote

Once you’ve written a few bullets (somewhere between three to five statements is usually enough) describing the key aspects of your position, call it “good enough!” Then move on to your next most recent position in your work history, following the same process to develop an expanded job description for your resume. Repeat this process until you’ve filled in details for as many positions as you’re choosing to include on your resume.

Tip: Be careful to not get caught in, “paralysis by analysis”—a situation where you keep rewording your work experience descriptions, trying to make them perfect, and wind up getting stuck in your resume development process!

Excerpted and adapted from “Career Coward’s Guide to Resumes” by Katy Piotrowski, M.Ed.

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